Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos

by Karen J Coates, Jerry Redfern (Photographer)

Overview

Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern spent more than seven years traveling in Laos, talking to farmers, scrap-metal hunters, people who make and use tools from UXO, people who hunt for death beneath the earth and render it harmless. With their words and photographs, they reveal the beauty of Laos, the strength of Laotians, and the commitment of bomb-disposal teams. People take precedence in this account, which is deeply personal without ever becoming a polemic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781934159491
Publisher:	ThingsAsian Press
Publication date:	12/01/2013
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Karen Coates says “I’ve been hooked on Asia ever since I spent a semester of graduate school in Hanoi more than a dozen years ago. Somehow I managed to wheedle my husband, photojournalist Jerry Redfern, into a life on the move. I took a newspaper job in Phnom Penh in 1998, shortly after we married, and we’ve been tromping through jungles and rice paddies ever since.  I’m the Southeast Asia correspondent for Archaeology and I write a Food Culture column for The Faster Times. My work appears in publications around the world such as GlobalPost, Wall Street Journal Asia, Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, National Geographic Books, Fodor’s Travel Guides, DAYS Japan, GEO Spain, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and many others.” Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern combined their talents in Cambodia Now: Life in the Wake of War (McFarland and Company 2005) and in This Way More Better; Stories and Photos from Asia’s Back Roads (ThingsAsian Press 2013).


Jerry Redfern began his career as a staff photographer at newspapers in the American West, at a time when papers still had darkrooms and photographers still processed their own film. In 1998, he and his wife, Karen Coates, moved to Cambodia where Redfern shot news, features and investigative stories for Agence France-Presse, The New York Times, The Cambodia Daily and other publications. Redfern’s work has won awards from numerous journalism and art organizations, including the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Center – Review Santa Fe, and the National Press Photographers Association. Redfern’s images appear in publications around the world, includingThe New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Archaeology, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, GEO, Sierra, National Geographic Books, and many others.


 
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments A Note on Method
Map of Laos Prologue Chapter 1: All That Remains Addendum 1: Comments Chapter 2: When the Planes Came—Remembering War Addendum 2: A Few Common Bombs Chapter 3: Shovels and Scrap Chapter 4: Accidents Addendum 3: The Survey Says Chapter 5: Clearance Chapter 6: Jim Harris—an American in Laos Chapter 7: The Plain of Jars Chapter 8: The Ho Chi Minh Trail Today Chapter 9: Life on the Farm Chapter 10: Prospects Bibliography
Notes
Author & Photographer Profiles
Index

Editorial Reviews

10/07/2013
During its long involvement in Vietnam the United States waged a not-so-secret war in neighboring Laos. From 1963 till 1974, the U.S. dropped some two million tons of bombs on the tiny Southeast Asian nation in the fight against the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. “To this day Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth,” Coates (Cambodia Now: Life in the Wake of War ) points out in her account of the legacy left by unexploded ordnance. Coates and Redfern, her photojournalist husband, began work on this book in 2005, making numerous trips to Laos and digging deeply into official records and other primary sources. The result is a reportorial look at conditions on the ground in Laos, often written in the first person, describing the pair’s travels around the country interviewing and photographing those affected by the bombs. Filled with scores of Redfern’s black-and-white photographs, the book concentrates on the two main legacies of the bombing: the killing and maiming of thousands that continues to this day, and the innovative ways that people have repurposed the tons of scrap metal left in the aftermath of conflict. B&w photos. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly